Thursday, August 21, 2014

ROBOCOP: Blu-ray (Orion 1987) MGM/Fox Home Video

There are really
only two truly iconic science-fiction movies from the 1980’s: the first is
James Cameron’s The Terminator
(1984); the other remains Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop
(1987). While the former, with its apocalyptic ‘end of days’ scenario, can
effectively be classified as pseudo-horror, the latter is a delicious social
satire, and something of a time capsule in its anti-capitalist sentiments;
Verhoeven and screenwriter, Edward Neumeier, railing against the ‘me’ generation’s prevailing ‘greed is good’ mantra; the yuppies
represented herein as egomaniacal, ultra-violent and self-destructing
narcissistic pleasure seekers.

At the time of
its release, RoboCopseemed like an
unlikely venture for Verhoeven, whose career was begun on the promise of
intense, character-driven dramas. Still, in his native Holland, Verhoeven had
garnered a reputation for pushing the envelope in screen permissiveness.
However, when the political polarity shifted from right to left wing
governments, Verhoeven’s movie projects – nationally funded – began to
encounter stalemates. In retrospect, this indignation seems to have colored
Verhoeven’s critiques on power in general – also, its socio-economic
influencers; the director transposing these highly personal artistic
frustrations onto his directorial debut in the U.S. – RoboCop.

For months,
screenwriter, Edward Neumeier had tried
to market his idea about the future of law enforcement, set in the gangland
urban decay of Detroit; the city saved from itself by a robotic crusader. Sharing
this idea with another writer, Michael Miner, Neumeier was to discover a
kindred spirit who also thought robots were ‘cool’. Miner had, in fact, toyed with his own ‘robot themed’
adventure story about a man who, after suffering a tragic accident, is refitted
with full-body mechanical prosthetics to enhance his abilities to administer
order and justice.

Drawing on a
formidable backlog of hallowed cinema robots, with a particular homage made to
Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece, Metropolis,
Neumeier and Miner’s two concepts eventually melded and morphed into RoboCop; the ‘working title’ incurring everything from snide chuckles to outright
guffaws as being tacky, clichéd and downright silly. In retrospect, the
parallels between RoboCop and The Terminator are superficial at best;
each a post-modern robot-themed story relying on deft bits of very dark comedy
and book-ended by wall-to-wall action. Both movies contain a deeper message: Terminator’s forewarning of man’s
methodical quest to self-destruction, RoboCop’s
initially less clear, but ultimately, more deeply evolved themes crystalized by
Verhoeven’s extemporaneous passion for reshaping and massaging the narrative as
he was shooting it.

Initially, Neumeier
had passed his screenplay to Verhoeven’s agent, who promptly shared it with his
client and received a very adamant ‘no’ for his efforts. It seems Verhoeven’s
wife was chiefly responsible for coaxing her husband into reconsidering his
hasty rejection of RoboCop;
Verhoeven eventually drawing out satirical elements to create a higher
concept/anti-capitalist diatribe from this low-budget B-grade programmer;
exploiting only the patina of sci-fi, and its bold, gutsy (and gut-strewn)
adventurism to complement his more richly derived and mined artistic milieu. After producer, Jonathan Kaplan turned
Neumeier and Miner down, the pair approached John Davison at Orion Pictures;
the company’s previous and overwhelming success with The Terminator, arguably, influencing the studio’s decision to
green light the project.

In retrospect,RoboCop feels very much like a
transposition of time-honored traits ripped directly from the Hollywood western
playbook; our noble hero trading in his white, ten gallon and trusty steed for
glistening breast plates, protective helmet and bulletproof body armor. Our
mechanized messiah even indulges in some slick Hop-along Cassidy gunplay, the
character twirling his new-age six-shooter between his robotic fingers before
appropriately, and effortlessly, slipping it into a hidden compartment in his
leg; highly representational of the leather holster worn by western heroes and
gunslingers. And RoboCop goes even
further in its analogous associations with the Hollywood western; the
crime-infested urban cityscape (actually Dallas and Pennsylvania subbing in for
Detroit) a dead ringer for the lawlessness of Dodge City or Tombstone. Paul Verhoeven’s anthropological study of the
western genre is married to his outsider’s perspective on American cultural in
general, circa 1987. This elevates the whole tenor of the piece. RoboCop could so easily have degenerated
into rank nihilism. Instead it rises above the squibs to become a fairly
weighty tome about the restoration and preservation of humanity’s collective
faith.

RoboCop gets a fair amount of mileage from this congruence;
also from Verhoeven’s other great spark of inspiration – the Bible. Approaching
RoboCopfrom a purely humanitarian
perspective, Verhoeven’s high concept takes aim at no less a cataclysm than the
crucifixion. “I wanted to make a movie
about Satan killing Jesus”, Verhoeven would later admit. Indeed, the brutal
execution of RoboCop’s human alter
ego, lanky police officer, Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller) and his penultimate ‘resurrection’ as a reprogrammed humanoid,
dedicated to achieving Detroit’s salvation, draws on some intensely felt parallels
with the Christ story; this industrialized avenging angel sworn to protect the
sanctity of human life and uphold the law; that is, until the final bloody
confrontation between Murphy’s body-armored superhero and arch nemesis/corporate
exec, Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) ensues.

The other
appealing aspect that lured Verhoeven into making the movie was its action-packed
pugnacity. This goes well beyond Verhoeven’s last name and that other word –
violence – both beginning with the letter ‘V’. It’s far too easy to be
dismissive about the film’s over-the-top ferocity, particularly the grotesque
nature of Murphy’s cruel extermination and his even more callous reconstruction
– his memory erased (well…almost) by corporate America, stamped with the
assembly-line model number as a ‘Robocop’.
Unlike most sci-fi, RoboCop is a far
more humanistic exploration of man’s dependency on machinery (man actually
becoming machinery, made ‘the other’ in his own society and exploited by his
own kind to do their bidding). Verhoeven revels in this message: the
sacrificing of Murphy’s mind and soul to the gods of profit and hedonism only
to turn away from all these man-made temptations: the creation rising beyond
all expectations to expose and champion the cause of humanity for humanity’s
sake.

Briefly,
Verhoeven considered Michael Ironside as his star. Alas, the sleek design of
RoboCop’s skeletal structure and shell (basically a latex wet suit covered in
foam and plastic appliances, spray painted to look like heavy dye-cast metal)
necessitated casting an actor of lean body mass, physically agile and in
excellent shape. Ultimately, Peter
Weller won the part; an inspired choice. Weller has an otherworldly ‘Michael
Rennie’ quality about him, almost better suited to play the humanoid avenger
than this flesh and blood cop who loses everything, but regains a partial sense
of his former identity in the end. Weller, who had trained in mixed martial
arts, adopted a very birdlike stance in his interpretation of the character. In
fact, one can see definite traces of Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in Weller’s mimed performance, the
personality of this character basically emerging from under the uncomfortable
costume.

For the pivotal
part of Officer Anne Lewis, a no-nonsense, pseudo-love interest for Murphy and
his alter ego, Verhoeven first turned to Stephanie Zimbalist, who backed out at
the last possible moment, affording Nancy Allen the opportunity to step in and
make the part her own. Like co-star Ronny Cox, Allen’s on-screen persona would
receive an attitude adjustment by Verhoveven, the director ordering her to snip
off and dye her trademark strawberry blonde tresses; Allen’s newly christened
mannish crop perfectly complimenting her archetype as a very butch babe. As for
Ronny Cox, herein, we get a very fascinating screen heavy; courtly, polished
and well-mannered on the surface/teeming with subliminal homoerotic rage,
manifested in his character’s ruthless desire to conquer the boardroom at all
costs; even contributing to the cold-blooded murder of two younger
executives.

Special
effects artist, Rob Bottin began sculpting his RoboCop body armor under a
cloud; Verhoeven inadvertently impugning the creative process of ‘finding the character’ with the
suggestion Bottin adhere to his inspiration and use a prototype culled from
some Japanese comic books. Alas, the Japanese influence, with its oversized
shoulders and chunky legs proved impossible to maneuver; Weller confessing to
Verhoeven he could barely move in this costume; much less give a competent
performance. For several days at the
start of the shoot it looked as though RoboCopwas already shaping up to be a folly of epic proportion. Indeed, the picture
would go over both time and budget. Bottin and Verhoeven quickly fell out of
friendship, their adversarial alliance growing more tenuous by the hour as
Verhoeven pressed on. Peter Weller backed Bottin in his decision to work night
and day to further streamline the costume and make it manageable.

RoboCop is set in an undisclosed time in the not-so-distant
future, presumably in a dystopian Detroit, Michigan suffering from urban blight
and overrun with violent crime; in short – Detroit circa 1987 to the present. The
film doesn’t appear to have dated all that much because little has actually changed
in the Motor City in the many years since its release. Here is a community (and
I use the term very loosely) mismanaged by the few profit-driven corporate
executives of the fictional mega-conglomerate, OCP (Omni Consumer Products);
the daily vigilantism reigning terror on the streets, cheerfully reported on
the nightly news, co-anchored by a pair of fresh-faced talking heads (including
future Entertainment Tonight co-host, Leeza Gibbons). Recognizing the city’s moral
implosion as imminent, the mayor gives OCP full control to develop an elite
robotic police force to patrol the perilous streets; also, total freedom to
demolish whole portions of the city to make way for a planned construction
project; the utopian metropolitan center – Delta City – to be managed in a very
Hitlerian fashion by OCP as its own independent state.

Naturally,
this decision raises ire in the Detroit police force, its harried sergeant,
Warren Reed (Robert DoQui) barely able to keep the last vestiges of morale
afloat as the remnants threaten to strike. Unbeknownst to everyone, at this
very moment OCP’s senior VP, Dick Jones is set to unveil a prototype of a robot
droid that will be assigned to restore Detroit to its former glory. The ED-209
is a lumbering giant; an ominous presence with a pair of powerful machine guns
for arms. Alas, in attempting to show off its potential as a crime-fighting
colossus, Jones hits upon a malfunction that causes the 209 to brutally
obliterate fellow executive, Kinney (Ken Page) in a hailstorm of bullets. Seizing upon the opportunity to steal Jones’
thunder, enterprising exec, Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) interrupts the
ghoulishly funerealtête-à-tête between Jones and OCP’s Chief Officer (Dan
O’Herlihy) to inform them his RoboCop program is all set to develop the first
human/cyborg hybrid crime fighter. All they need is a recently deceased human
subject.

Appalled by
Jones’ lack of remorse over the gruesome murder committed by the 209 –
referring to it as a ‘minor glitch’ –
the chief officer green lights Morton’s project; encouraging OCP to assign police
officers to more hazardous neighborhoods in order to expedite the prospect of
at least one of them dying in the line of duty; thereby supplying Morton’s
minions with their necessary guinea pig. Alas, that poor rat turns out to be
Alex J. Murphy – slightly naïve, newly arrived and assigned to patrol the dark
back alleys with his partner, Anne Lewis. The only woman on the force, Lewis is
nevertheless one of Detroit’s toughest cops and proves it by subduing a
psychotic suspect taken into custody with only her brute fists as protection.
She’s Murphy’s kind of gal…well, sort of. After all, he’s a happily married man
with a good-looking wife, Ellen (Angie Bolling) and young son, Jimmy (Jason
Levine) waiting for him at home.

Too soon,
Murphy and Lewis encounter the ruthless gang lord, Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith,
better known these days for his lovable curmudgeon on That 70’s Show). Boddicker and his motley crew of violent
offenders, including gun-happy Leon C. Nash (Ray Wise) and goofy
tough-guy-wannabe, Emil M. Antonowsky (Paul McCrane) waste no time cornering
Murphy inside a derelict steel mill before delighting in his slow death. Verhoeven’s
first foray into uber-grotesque, stomach-churning sadism begins with Boddicker
blowing off Murphy’s left hand, using a double-barrel shotgun and ending with a
powerful blast from another handgun that blows the back of Murphy’s head and
brains all over the factory floor before Lewis can get to him.

Verhoeven
counterbalances this mind-numbing sequence with one even more anesthetizing to
our collective sense of moral indignation: Murphy’s view from beyond the grave
as Bob Morton and his crew of emotionally retarded scientists, including Tyler
(Sage Parker) and OCP’s corporate stooge, Johnson (Felton Perry) callously
tinker with erasing his memory and reprogramming his mind to reflect the RoboCop
program; to protect and serve the populace and obey the law – or rather, the
edicts of OCP. As RoboCop, Murphy is given three primary directives: serve the
public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. His debut within the
precinct is met with rank skepticism. But pretty soon, RoboCop begins to prove
his medal by thwarting a rape in progress and later, by stopping a gas station
robbery – albeit, by blowing everything up. In this latter crime, Emil
recognizes certain characteristics about RoboCop that distinctly remind him of
Murphy; Emil fleeing the scene thoroughly unsettled before RoboCop can stop his
escape.

The success of
RoboCop comes with unforeseen problems. First, Lewis realizes RoboCop is really
Murphy, thereby inadvertently jogging his memory. During a routine battery
recharging at the precinct, RoboCop begins to have visions of his former life.
We see what Murphy sees; reliving Murphy’s final moments on earth and his assassination
all over again. The visions cause RoboCop to leave the precinct in pursuit of
Boddicker and his henchmen. His first
call is paid on the Hall of Justice, where he uses his own USB port – a spike protruding
from the middle of his fist – to access data files of Boddicker’s known
accomplices; the files stored within his computerized main frame now. In the meantime, Dick Jones hires Boddicker
to take care of Bob Morton; the assassin breaking into Morton’s home while he
is entertaining a pair of cheap hookers with some expensive cocaine. Ordering
the…uh…ladies out, Boddicker subdues Morton with a few well-placed gunshots,
designed to inflict maximum pain, before revealing to him Jones is behind the
assassination. Unable to move, Morton lies helpless on his carpet while
Boddicker places a hand grenade just out of reach, pulling its pin and exiting
Morton’s house moments before a hellish explosion levels it to the ground.

Boddicker now
attempts to muscle in on a lucrative cocaine manufacturing plant run by local
scumbag, Sal (Lee DeBroux); the tenuous deal at gunpoint thwarted when RoboCop
intercedes and attempts to place everyone under arrest. Although many of Sal
and Boddicker’s goons are taken out by RoboCop, Boddicker, Nash and Emil manage
to survive. Boddicker is actually taken into custody by RoboCop, but not before
he confesses Dick Jones is behind everything. Boddicker now uses his one phone
call to alert Jones RoboCop is on his way to apprehend him; Jones quietly and
patiently waiting for his arrival, only to interrupt RoboCop’s primary
objectives by referring to a fourth ‘hidden’ directive; one RoboCop cannot
override. He cannot arrest any senior officer of the OCP Corporation. Jones
orders the ED-209 to annihilate RoboCop; the gargantuan beast of a machine
unleashing its formidable fire power on the fairly diminutive RoboCop. Although
badly damaged, RoboCop manages his escape from the high rise office building,
down a narrow set of stairs the ED-209 cannot navigate without toppling and
becoming lodged on its back in the stairwell.

Taking refuge
at an abandoned steel mill, RoboCop is tended to Lewis who helps remove his face
guard, revealing Murphy’s visage beneath. His radar shooting navigator injured,
Lewis guides RoboCop into relearning his human skills to fire his weapon with
accuracy once again. In the meantime, Jones orders Boddicker to find and
destroy RoboCop; Boddicker, Nash and Emil locating him and Lewis at the steel
mill. Nash is blown to bits in an
observation tower. In his attempt to run RoboCop over, Emil is swallowed alive
in a toxic soup that eats through his skin before being struck and run over by
a van driven by Boddicker, who also manages to take Lewis hostage. In the
penultimate showdown, RoboCop saves Lewis’ life; storming the OCP Corporate
offices to reveal to its Chief Executive Officer Jones is behind everything.
Unwilling to surrender, Jones takes the CEO hostage, RoboCop unable to react to
the incident until the CEO publicly declares Jones is fired. The impediment to
his fourth directive removed, RoboCop shoots Jones dead. Pleased with the
outcome, the CEO asks to know his rescuers’ name, to which RoboCop smiles and
replies, “Murphy”.

In these brief
moments, Paul Verhoeven brings us full circle to the impetus for his
involvement on the project in the first place; the human saga behind all the
glitzy – and then, state of the art – special effects. RoboCop
is Verhoeven’s idea of a thinking man’s sci-fi adventure. It succeeds
partly, the essence of the human drama surviving the deluge of
blood-soaked/bullet-riddled SFX that occasionally threaten to obscure and
submarine the exercise. I recall seeing RoboCop
in 1987 and, as a novice movie-goer, being marginally put off by its obtuse
carnage. I mean, blowing up an entire gas bar in a nuclear-styled explosion,
merely to rid the neighborhood or a single criminal (and not even managing to
catch the criminal on that destructively over-the-top try) just seemed
like…well…overkill (pardon the pun).

And despite
Verhoeven’s loftier ambitions to tell a Biblical tale in modern day (even
futuristic) terms (distilling its purpose for a baser objective: merely to
appeal to an audience of adolescent male ticket buyers) just seemed appallingly
subpar for the movie’s many other gifts. I confess, I have yet to entirely rid
myself of this assessment. What made the movie click back then, and what,
arguably, remains its linchpin today, is Peter Weller’s matter-of-course performance
as our mechanized superhero. In
hindsight, RoboCop is Weller’s tour
de force, not Paul Verhoeven’s; the actor managing to withstand the prosaic
technological dispensing of squibs in rapid succession, transforming human
flesh into bloody sushi in a matter of frames and with all the potency of a
strong hit of Novacain. I still can’t
get excited over RoboCop’s slasher mentality.
Although, I must also confess the movie plays far more acceptable by today’s
(cough) cinematic standards than it did in 1987. Is RoboCopart? Let us say, it’s an interesting hiccup where art and
commerce lodge together like a bloody clot, soon to be dislodged by the next,
more violent, screen spectacle. Pity the poor squibs now, why don’t you?

This is MGM’s
second outing for RoboCop on
Blu-ray. Since 2007 there have been several repackaged editions – all of them
sporting the same fundamentally flawed 1080p transfer. Well, you can
effectively retire whatever previous edition you’re currently holding in your
private collection, because this newly remastered director’s cut is definitely
the way to go. The film looks gorgeous. Cinematographer Jost Vacano’s style is
gritty and grainy – shot on a shoestring budget. Most of the SFX were created in-camera
(much preferred to today’s CGI in my not so humble opinion), others achieved
with a combo of blue-screen matte work and crude stop-motion animation (again, supportive
of the action and giving very concrete weight to the robotic movements).

This
remastered edition is from a new 4K scan. While, some have argued 4K is really
no more than a marketing ploy, having absolutely nothing to do with actual
picture quality, I’ll just go on record in support of ANY effort to remaster
movies in their optimal quality at the highest bit rate currently available.
Done in conjunction with proper color correction/clean-up and timing, it
certainly cannot hurt, even if the final result must be down-converted to
present Blu-ray resolution standards, before being compressed and authored. Enough
of that. So, how does RoboCop on
Blu-ray look? Fantastic! The TV broadcast segments that open and infrequently
intrude on the action and plot (Verhoeven’s way of squeezing in social satire between
his bouts of Tourette Syndrome-styled ultra-violence) remain at a low-rez
quality as intended; showing deliberate
signs of digital combing, fuzzy colors and a lot of video noise. This is as it
should be. Prepare to be startled by how much clarity follows once the film
moves out of the media spin and into its real/reel world: the new scan revealing
a shocking amount of fine detail in hair, skin, backgrounds, clothing, etc.:
the ‘wow’ factor present throughout. Again, RoboCop is not a movie one watches for exuberant colors, but this
disc faithfully reproduces that vintage 80’s look with precision. We get good solid
flesh tones and a fair amount of film grain looking utterly marvelous. Contrast
is bang on. About colors in general: there is a noted shift away from the
cooler color palette on the old 2007 Blu-ray.

Personal
opinion, of course, but this remastered Blu-ray seems to look better for the ‘warming
up’ of the palette; somehow more hearty and robust. Is it as the film was meant
to look or did look in 1987? I get frustrated when that question gets asked, as
though there was one standard adhered to by all so that no matter what theater
one happened to be sitting in, in 1987, the image viewed was identical and
therefore, true to the director’s original intent. Rubbish! Does this
remastered edition of RoboCop look as good as it did back then? I’d argue –
even better. Is it true to Paul Verhoeven’s vision? Only Verhoeven himself can
answer that! Does it betray my memory of how the movie looked way back when?
Decidedly not. That’s the barometer I’ll go by and stick with to recommend this
offering.

Finally, MGM
has done a meticulous clean-up to ensure age-related artifacts have all but
vanished. I detected a few brief speckles during some of the stop-animation
sequences, probably a result of the primitive compositing process back then;
not distracting and definitely forgivable to not even worth mentioning. RoboCop’s theatrical release was in
Dolby Surround with a limited 70mm engagement in 4-track stereo; the soundtrack
Oscar-nominated (* sound editors, Stephen Hunter Flick and John Pospisil
actually won a special achievement Oscar for RoboCop). The 2007 Blu-ray gave listeners the option between a 5.1
remix (new) and a 4.0 presumably replicating the 70mm release. We get only the
5.1 DTS on this remastered Blu-ray and, honestly, no complaints about it
either. Great care has been taken to achieve a natural sounding upgrade.

Bonus features
are plentiful; nearly 2 hours of stuff including a Q&A from 2012, the
magnificently comprehensive Flesh and Steel: The Making of Robocop, a pair of
featurettes from 1987, a breakdown of the boardroom sequence with storyboards
and commentary by animator, Phil Tippett, a choice selection of deleted Scenes,
a few more junkets on villains, SFX then and now, and the legacy the movie has
since wrought. Plus the original commentary track recorded for the 2007 release
and featuring Verhoeven, Neumeier and the film’s executive producer, Jon
Davison. All of this is capped off by TV spots and a theatrical trailer. Bottom
line: very highly recommended!

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca